Recently, many peers have been asking me the same question: how to increase beverage sales in local county-level markets. This is a representative question in the industry, so I will briefly discuss methods to boost beverage sales in county-level markets based on my experience, for reference.
Any national beverage brand grows from a regional brand. Only by first succeeding regionally can it go national, except for Evergrande Spring. How Evergrande Spring went national is not discussed here.
The most representative regional market is the county-level market (including administrative districts of prefecture-level cities). There are 2,400 county-level administrative units in China. Succeeding in county-level markets is a necessary path for all beverage companies to become national brands. So how can sales in county-level markets be increased? This is also a direction of FMCG marketing that I study, namely regional breakthrough marketing. Since each county-level market has different actual conditions, I will analyze from the perspective of marketing push and pull. The local market must gradually solve the links of enthusiasm, coverage, display, willingness to buy, and buying more. These links are closely connected and indispensable. A brief analysis is as follows:
Enthusiasm
You can't do anything alone; you need a team. How to improve the team's sales enthusiasm is paramount. The team here refers to frontline salespeople, who can be salespeople of distributors or deep-distribution sales representatives in the company's local sales offices. The team can be 2-3 people or more than 5. This requires our local regional managers to continuously train and guide from both spiritual and material aspects, enhance personal confidence, stimulate team fighting spirit, clarify team goals, and break them down to each team member. We must follow the principle of more encouragement and less punishment. Commissions and distribution rewards should be clear and paid promptly. Set examples, share experience, increase confidence, and then sales will increase.
I have always appreciated a saying: "An excellent team has no failed individuals; a failed team has no excellent individuals." We must instill the idea of sharing honor and disgrace with the team into every member's mind, improve each person's individual combat capability, and the team's performance will naturally rise. Of course, those with negative and pessimistic emotions in the team must be resolutely removed, otherwise they will bring great harm to the team.
Coverage
Coverage solves the possession of terminal networks. Therefore, our regional managers need to survey the local terminal network. This work is already mature in the FMCG industry and has developed a series of methods to control terminal stores, especially the channel refinement brought by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Master Kong, which divides terminal networks in detail, such as schools, internet cafes, restaurants, scenic spots, traditional stores, townships, etc. I won't go into detail here.
But I want to point out the effective coverage of beverages. Do all channels need to sell our products?
No, we should selectively enter stores based on the packaging and price of the beverage, that is, effective coverage.
Canned beverages should occupy terminal restaurants; it is more difficult to sell in terminal circulation stores and scenic spots. Terminal circulation stores should mainly focus on PET bottles, which are convenient to carry and can be put in bags if not finished. Community stores should focus on whole-box purchases and increase the promotion of gift boxes. This requires our frontline salespeople to understand effective network coverage to increase sales.
Display
Beverage consumption is impulsive. In this era of brand homogenization, how to capture consumers' purchasing psychology and make them willing to buy our brand's beverages is currently a difficulty in marketing for all brands.
Everyone is making great efforts to seize terminal shelves and freezers, invest in terminal shelves, make store signs for terminal stores, post posters at doors, set up umbrellas outside stores, hang banners, buy the largest display area on shelves, and cut-box displays at counters. Everyone has thought of all the tricks, with the only purpose of attracting attention. But are these really useful?
Let's put ourselves in the shoes of an ordinary consumer. Do you remember which brand's display you saw in a terminal store today?
Right, there are too many brands, and you simply can't remember.
The only purpose of maximizing display is to attract consumers to buy. Since everyone is fighting for display space, consumers don't remember anyway. Can we save this expense and use it to create a series of fun, interesting, and interactive things for consumers? So, I suggest that peers seriously consider making terminal displays more interesting based on the different characteristics of their brands.
Willingness to Buy
Consumers go through two stages when buying beverages: trial purchase and habitual purchase. We need to analyze which stage our brand is in.
In the trial purchase stage, we need to create a series of promotional activities to get consumers to buy, such as tasting, buy-one-get-one, etc., to increase sales. I suggest making it fun for consumers to learn about and buy the product. For example, in July 2012, when I was the general manager of H Brand in Guangdong, I held 7 roadshow events in Shenzhen in one month. Each roadshow started at 16:00 and ended at 21:30, at leisure squares in suburban areas. The activity offered 5 chances to throw rings for 10 yuan for 3 bottles of beverage. The highest sales in one night reached 6,700 yuan.
The second is the habitual purchase stage. In this stage, we need to solve the next topic, which is buying more.
Buying More
In this stage, consumers will actively go to sales points to buy our brand's beverages and have habitual consumption. But to increase sales, we need to solve the problem of consumers buying more. We generally use instant discounts in supermarkets and bundle discounts at terminals to encourage consumers to buy more.
When I worked at Taizinai in 2005, I discovered that the secret to Taizinai's white bottle achieving national sales of 2 billion was whole-box purchases. Therefore, in this stage, I suggest that brands or regions focus on whole-box purchases. Currently, dairy companies Yili and Mengniu have entered the 50 billion club. Do we see them selling single-box products? Almost all are whole-box purchases. Whole-box beverage purchases will also become a trend, especially in community stores.
I have briefly discussed these 5 aspects for increasing sales in county-level markets. I hope they are useful to everyone.
Hu Wei, pen name Jing Bozi, from Jiujiang, now living in Beijing, graduated from Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, a practical marketing expert in FMCG, partner and chief marketing consultant of Shanghai Lixi Culture Communication Co., Ltd. He is a contributing writer for well-known domestic marketing magazines and journals such as "Sales and Marketing", "China Wine News", and "Pharmaceutical Economic News". He is good at using Taoist Huang-Lao scholarship to create the "Six Hearts" management theory to build core sales teams. He focuses on differentiated marketing, channel incentives, and regional market breakthroughs for food and beverages. He has held positions such as Product Director and General Manager of Guangdong Region at Huiyuan Juice Group, Marketing Director and Marketing Director of Northern Region at Hunan Taizinai Group, Marketing General Manager at Jiangxi Gaozheng Group, and Deputy General Manager of Marketing at Duoduo Runer Company.
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